PHOENIX — When you get this close to the NBA championship, love for the game should be like Robin Lopez’s hair … here, there, everywhere.

It should be spilling all over the floor, past those Western Conference finals logos and right to the bench area that should look as united and animated as Phoenix’s was Tuesday night.

Even after getting the theoretical jolt of a Game 3 loss, the Lakers just stood around in Game 4. They stood around and assumed they would stand taller. They didn’t, because the Suns used their passion for the opportunity at hand and actually jumped.

“We’ve got to fight,” Phoenix’s Steve Nash said. “They’re bigger than us. Most people can make an argument that they’re better than us. But we’ve got to have a lot of heart and a lot of determination and find ways to win the little battles.”

The opening tip of Game 4 was going the Lakers’ way. The Suns kept trying for the ball. It came loose on the floor. The Lakers who wound up in pursuit of the ball looked more like they fell down while trying to stay clean than they got down in hopes of getting dirty.

In that first-second moment, any one Laker making like Rajon Rondo’s Rickey Henderson-style head-first steal in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference finals could’ve been the domino to set off everyone else. Instead, the moment passed like the desert wind – and the Lakers again wound up chasing the game instead of embracing it.

“Now we’ve got make sure we go home and we have a really good intense game where we set the tone from the first second,” the Lakers’ Pau Gasol said about Game 5 Thursday night at Staples Center, “and we play as hard as possible for 48 minutes.”

Gasol came out with that intensity Tuesday night … in the second half – and only because he had blown his first half with a careless second foul early. Kobe Bryant’s assertiveness and brilliance on offense when he “felt the game slipping away” in the second quarter got him past Karl Malone for the fourth-most points in NBA playoff history and made the game competitive, yet where was Bryant’s force on defense in either game in Phoenix?

Andrew Bynum was predictably more motivated for Game 4 after not showing up in Game 3 and getting called on it by Phil Jackson. Bynum moved well enough that Jackson said afterward he was “heartened” by Bynum’s contribution and even declared: “He’s going to play better as we go along.”

The most productive Laker aside from Bryant on a per-minute basis, Bynum did it with a right-knee brace newly unlocked from the flexed-forward position that had been protecting but limiting him.

“I told them to let it up,” Bynum said of his brace.

He was tired of the awkward rubbing of the immobilizing brace and can now straighten his leg to take a full stride, even though his frayed cartilage is much more vulnerable to be pinched painfully between his bones. This small change could be a critical adjustment in the Lakers’ championship drive, although it didn’t keep Bynum from again thinking so slowly in recognizing help-defense situations that Gasol, Jackson and others were infuriated during this game.

Bryant was just as angry with Lamar Odom at one point in Game 4 – this after Odom’s mindless play at key junctures of Game 3 had already left Bryant peeved.

“We’re not actively defending sequences that we know we have to defend,” Jackson said. “And some of it is our anticipation. Some of it is not being ready.”

The Lakers know all the Suns’ pick-and-roll and isolation plays by now. They know what the Suns – particularly the limited-skill guys off Phoenix’s bench – will turn to for success.

Nevertheless …

“They were all comfortable,” Odom said. “We didn’t take anything away. Everybody who played was comfortable out there.”

That’s what will happen when one team is out there getting after it and the other isn’t: The winners get to do what they want to do.

The Lakers talked ad nauseum before the series about how pace was the key, how they would maintain control instead of rushing to keep up with the Suns. Dropped into the fire in Phoenix, they tried to throw 3-pointers at the flames to douse them.

That’s the Suns’ game. That’s Channing Frye’s game. So despite missing his first shot Tuesday night to reach a mind-blowing 18 consecutive clangs, Frye nailed four of seven 3-point shots the rest of the game.

How did he do it?

“I came to a realization that this for some players is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” Frye said. “Why not just relax, have fun and let it ride?”

Well, the defending champion Lakers already know this is not a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Therein lies the story of their entire complacent season.

Yet this is not Game 63 in Charlotte.

This is the entire point.

Be aware how close that trophy is. Be appreciative that you get to play when no one else does. Be there for your teammates.

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